


Mother Knows Best

by threewalls



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Community: trope_bingo, Dark Snow, Future Fic, Gen, Kid Fic, Spoilers, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-25
Updated: 2013-03-25
Packaged: 2017-12-06 12:32:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 535
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/735708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/threewalls/pseuds/threewalls
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is the childhood Mary Margaret thinks Emma should have had. (Spoilers up to S2, episode 18.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mother Knows Best

Mary Margaret places the perfectly browned pot roast on a rack to rest, closing the oven door before slipping the mitts off her hands. The potatoes are mashed, the green beans are swimming in butter and there's peppermint-choc chip ice cream in the freezer for dessert. Everything's ready.

She finds David in the den, and walks back across through the dining room to the backyard door. Their new house is so much better for a family of their size. Children need space to run around in, and a sheriff needs a house that fits how important he is to their little town. It's a house they've earned.

"Emma!" Mary Margaret calls out into the backyard. "Henry! Time for dinner!"

They run in still whooping, "war" paint streaking in muddy lines on Emma's face and Henry calling "bang bang", his fingers pointing like a gun. Mary Margaret thinks it's a game one of the older boys at school have taught him. She's seen something like it happening on the playground through the windows of the teacher's lounge.

Mary Margaret sends Henry loping upstairs to clean up for dinner. Emma, she leads back into the kitchen, because she's going to need help carrying all the dishes into the dining room.

Emma's long blonde hair is falling out of its braid here and there, but they don't time to brush it out. Mary Margaret dampens one of the bottom corners of her apron under the tap, dabbing at her daughter's skin until every dark streak of dirt is gone from her face.

And oh, it hurts, the way she flings her arms around Mary Margaret with such easy abandon now. It squeezes her heart that it's so different from that first time she found Emma again, her arms so tentative to hug and so stiff.

It's a curse in itself that Mary Margaret can't enjoy having found Emma again without reliving the horror of having to give her baby up to save her, to save them all-- or the horror of finally finding her baby again and Emma looking at her like Mary Margaret wasn't even her mother. 

Magic always comes with a price, as the person who helped her protect her family is so fond of remarking. Mary Margaret and Rumplestiltskin have not seen eye to eye at all at certain times, but he knows just as she does how much it hurts to think of your child growing up without you, all alone. 

Maybe those years will always be a shadow over her memories of Emma. Maybe Mary Margaret will always remember the years lost to Regina's curse, but what is more important is that her daughter won't. For Emma to have the family she's always wanted, to have the childhood that Regina stole from her, Mary Margaret will pay the price a thousand-fold, and pay it gladly.

"I love you so much."

"I love you more," Emma says, grinning up at her. 

Mary Margaret wraps her arms tight around her daughter, and leans down to press a kiss to the top of her hair. Ten is such a precious age, and children grow up so fast.

"I love you most," she says. "Never forget that."

**Author's Note:**

> References to Disney's "Tangled" are intentional.


End file.
